In a Gallup Survey, 42% of American adults said that they experienced pain on a daily basis. Amongst such sufferers of chronic pain, spine-related problems constitute the bulk of the complaints. Spinal pain has been estimated to exist in as much as 66% of the general population. Beyond the substantial discomfort that back pain inflicts upon individuals, spine-related pain also incurs heavy social costs. For example, as many as one million spine surgeries, and as many as five million interventional procedures, are estimated to be performed in the United States each year. Well beyond the purely medical and psychological burdens of such procedures, the subsequent social costs related to productivity, disability compensation, and lost taxes, are substantial.
Currently, one of the most common treatments for discogenic pain is the removal of the disc associated with the pain; the adjacent vertebrae are then fused together, using either bone grafts, mechanical implants, or a combination of the two. This is drastic, highly invasive surgery that is both expensive and problematic. In particular, recovery times range from six months to over a year, and as many as 50% of patients experience subsequent pain levels to a degree that is equal to, or even exceeds, their pre-surgery levels.
It is therefore desirable to provide other methods of reducing discogenic-related pain that is both less costly and less surgically extreme.